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Youth Forum distributes newspapers to marginalized areas
Youth Forum
July 16, 2012

The Youth Forum, in collaboration with the country's different newspapers publishers and distributors, has embarked on a unique and cost effective method of disseminating news to different marginalised parts of Zimbabwe. This brilliant new initiative is part of the organization's efforts in assisting youths in marginalised rural, mining and farming communities to access crucial information that will help them make informed decisions.

This initiative involves the Youth Forum acquiring old newspapers from the print media houses, papers that are considered old by the urban folk, but whose news and value will still be fresh and valuable to the rural folk who would not have had the opportunity to peruse these papers. For as long as we can remember, the newspaper has been the primary info-hub through which people interacted, but this info-hub has always eluded the rural folk to such an extent that they miss information on a lot of events that happen across the country and globally, events that affect their day-to-day lives.

Whilst the shelf life of a daily paper is considered to be only 24 hours in the urban areas where they are readily available, the shelf life of the same paper is longer in rural areas. A newspaper that is as old as 7 days is new to most rural youths, and they always jostle to read newspapers that are even a month old, as they would not have come across most of the news in such papers.

It is with this in mind that the Youth Forum Information and Publicity Department has undertaken this initiative where the organization acquires such newspapers considered to be stale and redistributes them to the rural, mining and farming folk, as they always contain 'latest news' for these youths. These newspapers would otherwise have been disposed of in a non-environment friendly manner when other Zimbabweans still value their use. By bringing these papers to the marginalised youths, we also believe we are not only increasing the shelf life of these papers, but also the social currency found in them.

The initiative has only been dampened by lack of access to state-printed newspapers like The Herald, Kwayedza, where the printers/distributors sell old papers at the same prices with the current issues, prices which make the initiative untenable. The Youth Forum is therefore pleading with other organizations to neatly stake all such newspapers they have and inform us of their location as well as the date and time we can collect these for re-distribution. These papers will go a long way in emancipating the youths in the marginalised areas in terms of access to information.

The Youth Forum strongly believes that newspapers are still an important part of our democracy and their distribution to the end consumer is therefore of more than normal commercial interest, hence this initiative, which needs support from all individuals and associations that believe in information generation as a key pillar of democracy. Your assistance in this initiative will also go a long way towards advocating for meaningful and peaceful participation of youths in the forthcoming elections as research has shown that informed citizens are likely to positively participate in democratic processes whilst uninformed youths are the ones who engage in violent activities towards elections.

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